Featured Review: Music interventions for improving psychological and physical outcomes in cancer patients

Are there benefits of offering music interventions as a complementary treatment to people with cancer?Cancer may result in extensive emotional, physical and social suffering. Current cancer care increasingly incorporates psychosocial interventions to improve quality of life. Music therapy and music medicine interventions have been used to alleviate symptoms and treatment side effects and address psychosocial needs in people with cancer. In music medicine interventions, the patient simply listens to pre-recorded music that is offered by a medical professional. Music therapy requires the implementation of a music intervention by a trained music therapist, the presence of a therapeutic process and the use of personally tailored music experiences.A team of Cochrane authors based in the United States worked with Cochrane Gynaecological, Neuro-oncology and Orphan Cancers to update a previous Cochrane Review from 2011, which assessed and compared the effects of music therapy and music medicine interventions for physiological and physical outcomes in people with cancer. 22 new trials were identified for inclusion in this update. In total, 52 trials with a total of 3731 participants are included in this Cochrane Review. Most trials were at high risk of bias and, therefore, these results need to be interpreted with caution.This systematic review indicates that music interventions may have beneficial effects on anxiety, pain, fatigue, depression, and quality of life in people wit...

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Patients experiencing chronic pain and depression may be more likely to stop taking opioids if they adhere to their antidepressants, reports astudy published in theBritish Journal of Psychiatry. Further analysis also suggests that halting opioid use contributes to improvements in depression.“Depression can worsen pain and is common in patients who remain long-term prescription opioid users,” Jeffrey Scherrer, Ph.D., of the Saint Louis University School of Medicine said in a press release. “Effective depression treatment may break the mutually reinforcing opioid-depression relatio nship and increase the li...

CONCLUSION
Cognitive impairment can affect daily functioning, quality of life, and capacity to work in patients with cancer and those in remission. Consequently, cognitive assessment is now an important and necessary part of a comprehensive oncological care plan. Cancer-related cognitive impairment might be due to the direct effects of the cancer itself, nonspecific factors, or comorbid conditions that are independent of the disease and/or due to the adverse effects of the treatment or combination of treatments given for the disease. The prevalence and extent of cognitive impairment associated with cancer is recognized but...

In the United States, cancer is the leading cause of non-accidental death for parents of dependent children. Parents with advanced cancer face unique challenges when coping with their life-limiting illness. Studies of cancer patients demonstrate high rates of anxiety and depression related to the parental role. Additionally, parental status may influence anti-neoplastic treatment decision-making and advance care planning.

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Doctors know that herbs can affect medication regimens, wrote the researchers, from the South African Medical Research Council, in their new paper. But because people often don’t disclose to their healthcare providers what over-the-counter drugs and supplements they’re taking, it’s difficult for scienti...

The objective of the current study was to assess the preoperative and postoperative oral cancer pain, anxiety, and quality of life of OSCC patients with invasive treatment procedure.MethodsThe current study was conducted by interviewing 21 (10 males; 11 females) patients who had been diagnosed with stage 3 and stage 4 OSCC and about to go through surgery at the inpatient ward of Surgical Oncology Department, Hasan Sadikin Hospital, Bandung, Indonesia. A preoperative and interview was conducted by using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality o...

ConclusionsFamily members of patients in palliative medicine and hospice settings reported an immediate positive impact of music therapy on the patient and on themselves. More research needs to be conducted to better understand the benefits of music therapy for family members.

AbstractPurposeThe allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT) is a therapeutic medical treatment for various neoplastic hematologic, congenital, genetic, or acquired disorders. In this procedure which combines high-dose chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy and has a high degree of cytotoxicity, the patient experiences solitary confinement, which causes psychological distress, pain, anxiety, mood disorders and can lead him/her to depression. Music therapy was applied with the purpose of decreasing this social confinement. This is a randomized controlled trial.MethodPatients (n = 100) were selected ...